Just a thought, but man I wish they would keep the exhibit hall open until 9pm. Even 7 or 8 would be an improvement. The convention center is always packed and the exhibit hall even more so with their limited hours. Sometimes it's difficult just moving around in there. A few more hours would sure be nice.

Staying open later, while nice for us attendees, would be really rough on the exhibitors. Sure, many larger companies have enough people present that they could work shifts, but a lot of the smaller booths are one or two people. Asking the small business owner to work 10-11 hour days three days in a row is a bit much, and they are not allowed to leave or close their booths per Gen Con exhibitor policy. Gen Con's pace is already exhausting for the exhibitors so it's not unreasonable to let them have evenings off so they can enjoy the con too.

Rynic and bithlord - I completely understand what you are saying. Regardless I'd still like to see extended hours for the exhibit hall. My career has been working in technology sales and I've worked many large conventions over the years. It's very common in my field to work an exhibit hall from 9am - 9pm. That doesn't even take into account setup and tear-down time. Having said that, we would break the day up so that we had free time as well to experience the conventions and mingle. Usually we'd have 3-5 people working in different shifts. Believe me, if the exhibitors want to be there, they'll find a way to cover their booth for an extra hour or two.

 dranthor wrote:but not all boths have multiple people to do that. My friend works his booth alone so he would be stuck and unable to enjoy the convention at all

I agree with those saying longer hours would be nice. However, maybe then having separate hours for different vendors. Artist Alley and another section can be shorter hours while the rest are longer. The "other section" would be vendors who request shorter hours. Maybe only certain size booths would qualify to request.

 dranthor wrote:but not all boths have multiple people to do that. My friend works his booth alone so he would be stuck and unable to enjoy the convention at all

I agree with those saying longer hours would be nice. However, maybe then having separate hours for different vendors. Artist Alley and another section can be shorter hours while the rest are longer. The "other section" would be vendors who request shorter hours. Maybe only certain size booths would qualify to request.

I've run conventions with dealers halls, and yeah. No. The biggest issue in the hall is theft. Any booth left unattended will have items taken. Sadly

So how do you securely block off access to those spaces for those hours?

Also, dealers also often have to load in stock each morning, so that is 8hr of attendee currently, plus add 1hr on each end to open/close. And that is already a 10 hr day. Add in getting more inventory and loading it in, add another hour or two.

As a person who has worked in the Dealer Hall doing demos, I can tell you that noone who works the Dealer Hall wants the floor open any longer than it already is. 8 hours a day for 4 days straight is quite a bit of time.

If it were possible, I wouldn't care so much about needing to go in there later, but the best benefit would be in spreading out and thinning out the crowd. Attendance his literally doubled in the past 5 years. It is amazingly crowded in there now.

 matthias9 wrote:Yeah, it's probably not achievable for the reasons stated above.
If it were possible, I wouldn't care so much about needing to go in there later, but the best benefit would be in spreading out and thinning out the crowd. Attendance his literally doubled in the past 5 years. It is amazingly crowded in there now.

The growth has been tremendous, but it has not doubled. 5 years ago GenCon reported 41,000 attendees. Last year they reported 60,000+. Since last year sold out, and we haven't been getting any warnings about tickets being in danger of selling out this year, I think it's safe to say that the attendance for this year will be in the 60000 range.

 dkrantz152 wrote:OK, so maybe not doubled, but that's a 50% increase.
I would think that at some point, they might have to expand the exhibit hall into the outer ICC halls, and move the game events held there to the outer venues.

Aaaand no sooner did I say that GenCon 51 is not selling out than GenCon announces that they're close to selling out. I stand corrected.

Sorry -- it doubled since 2010. 7 years. I guess I haven't updated my talking points in 2 years. Time flies. In my defense, it DID double in the 5-year period from 2010 to 2015.

In any case, if you've been going for many years, as lots of people have been, it really has changed a lot (from an attendance standpoint) in just the last several years. I know the exhibit hall has expanded square footage somewhat, but I find it much more crowded now.

My old plan was to go there during a low traffic time (Friday was best). But, nowadays there is no low-traffic time during the whole Con.

I don't mean to complain, it's great that there are that many people coming. But, it does come with some downsides.